Rackspace pushes further into dedicated cloud services

Cloud hosting company Rackspace Hosting is attempting to drive enterprises to hybrid clouds with
the launch of a dedicated VMware vCenter Server while bolstering its drive to grow dedicated
cloud-based services.

The VMware vCenter Server service is designed to help
enterprises move to hybrid cloud computing by transferring existing VMware workloads from onsite
datacentres to a Rackspace datacentre.

The company claims that enterprises will still maintain control and flexibility but will benefit
from hybrid cloud technologies. It further states that the Rackspace hosted environment will look
and feel like an extension of customer’s own datacentres due to the vCenter Server APIs and
tools.

The dedicated VMware vCenter Server is an extension of Rackspace’s existing cloud services and
adds depth to its managed virtualisation services. The company aims to enable customers to augment
their on-site VMware deployments with Rackspace-managed private VMware environments in
Rackspace datacentres.

Rackspace hosts one of the largest VMware environments and operates the largest OpenStack-based
cloud. It has significant expertise in cloud and managed hosting, a 100% network uptime guarantee,
and other services it claims enterprise customers can entrust their hybrid cloud infrastructure to.

The launch of a dedicated VMware vCenter Server signals a wider move for Rackspace to grow its
dedicated cloud business. In its second quarter ended June 2013, the company saw 12.4% revenue
growth for dedicated hosting to $276.m. Its public cloud business, however, grew by 36.4% to
$99m.

Rackspace provides a full portfolio of hybrid hosting services including bare-metal dedicated
servers, servers virtualised by VMware, and both public and private cloud services powered by
OpenStack.

This week, IndependenceIT unveiled the 4.0 version of Cloud Workspace Suite, which features a number of enhancements; Knowledge Vault launched a partner program for its cloud-based analytics-as-a-service platform; and more.

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